Hello!
Sorry about this off-topic mail, but
you guys are the only bunch of game
developers that I know of :)
I would like to know if anyone has serious
interest in developing games (commercially) using
the programming language "Standard ML"?
(ML originally = MetaLanguage)
Actually I'm thinking mostly of PlayStation
games here - but for now I'm just looking
for any game-developer interest in ML at all...
And yes, this means you will have to
forget almost everything you ever
learned from coding C/C++ :)
What is ML? Well here are some hints:
ML is a higher order functional programming language.
Code written in ML is usually only half the size
(or less) than the corresponding C/C++ code.
The syntax of ML resembles ordinary Maths
notation in many places.
It is a typesafe language - meaning that when a program
compiles there can only be the following kinds of errors:
1) Infinite loops (which the compiler unfortunately cannot detect)
2) Logical programming errors (like unintended "features")
3) Out of memory problems, which usually results in a shutdown.
4) Runtime exceptions, which can be caught.
Thus it is not possible to have memory leaks,
memory trucations, wild pointers etc. This
of course means potentially fewer bugs.
But currently almost no graphics/game/sound/
gui/whatever API's exist for ML and again:
The language _is_ very different from C/C++...
For a more detailed description of the language
see:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/what/smlnj/sml.html
Please reply to me by private e-mail,
to keep this off-topic discussion off this list :)
Sorry for the interruption...
Cheers
--
http://www.HardcoreProcessing.com